I think at the Obama administration we all believe that
everybody has the right to live in a clean, healthy environment and a
prosperous economy. And we're working towards that. We need to reach
out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are
disproportional impacts, whether it's environmental protection or
promoting [a] clean energy economy. --Nancy Sutley interview, July 31, 2009

Question of the week: Given all of their agencies' beautiful
rhethoric about "reaching out to communities whose voices have been
ignored and where there are disproportional impacts," why haven't EPA
chief Lisa Jackson and CEQ administrator Nancy Sutley found three hours
in the schedules to visit a mountaintop removal site--the most
egregious environmental tragedy in their administration?

Will they ever visit Coal River Mountain in West Virginia--the mountaintop removal battleground for clean energy and a healthy environment?

On June 11, in responding to the national outcry over the tragedy of
mountaintop removal mining, the Obama administration promised it would,
"engage the public through outreach events in the Appalachian region to
help inform the development of Federal policy."

And the EPA, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of Interior jointly announced
their intent to "work in coordination with appropriate regional, state,
and local entities to help diversify and strengthen the Appalachian
regional economy and promote the health and welfare of Appalachian
communities."

Five months later, where is the Obama administration and its promises to visit the besieged coalfields of Appalachia?

EPA chief Lisa Jackson flew 1,687 miles to the Rocky Mountains of
Colorado this week to speak to a high school in Denver, but she--or any
top level of her staff--has yet to visit a nearby mountaintop removal
mine in Appalachia. (In May, Jackson flew 2,001 miles to visit the less
controversial Black Thunder Coal Mine in the Powder River Basin of
Wyoming.)

In the meantime: An estimated 1.6 billion pounds of ammonium nitrate
fuel explosives have ripped across the lush Appalachia mountains, as
part of mountaintop removal operations, since the Obama administration
took power in January.

1.6 billion pounds of explosives.

Since Jackson began her career with the EPA in the mid-1980s, over
500 mountains have been blown up, 1.2 million acres of hardwood forests
have been clear cut, an estimated 2,000 miles of waterways have been
jammed with mining waste, and untold numbers of American citizens have
been forced to relocate, through mountaintop removal operations.

Horrific violations of the Clean Water Act have reached a state of emergency in the coalfields--and the front page of the New York Times.

And while affected Appalachian coalfield residents have made numerous visits to Washington, DC to plead for environmental justice and their lives in a virtual war zone, and while over 20,000 petitions
were hand delivered to the EPA headquarters last month calling for a
SINGLE visit to the region, there is still no word, no announcement, no
plans for a visit by Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley.

Where's the love?

Nancy Sutley believes environmental justice is a civil rights issue, and she traveled over a 1,000 miles to New Orleans
last month, to assure American citizens concerned about coastal
restoration and levee safety issues that: "We've heard before and we've
heard here again today the need for urgency and we certainly understand
the need for urgency."

But Nancy Sutley--or any top level of her staff--has never visited a
mountaintop removal site in Appalachia where American citizens are
literally dying from coal slurry-contaminated drinking water, and have been forced out of their homes from reckless blasting, fly rock, and coal dust.

While the EPA made an important step to actually apply the law with greater scrutiny of mountaintop removal permits in September,
only one federal agency has made any attempt to keep the Obama
administration's promise to reach out to Appalachia, in Appalachia: The
Army Corps of Engineers, and they held quite possibly the most
disorganized, chaotic and violation-ridden hearing in West Virginia in
the recent history of the coalfields; residents are still calling for an investigation by the Department of Justice.

And where are those green jobs "to help diversify and strengthen the Appalachian regional economy"?

While small efforts have been made for some reforestation projects,
the coal barons and the pitiful WV politicians all know that
mountaintop removal has plundered the Appalachian economy, beleaguered the region in eternal costs, and wiped out any diversified economic development and even stopped a tiny tiny initiative for green jobs in West Virginia from passing through the state legislature.

Faced with a declining domestic and world coal demand, the
out-of-state global warming-denying union-busting coal barons (CEOs
from Virginia, Texas and St. Louis) held a bizarre seance with faltering West Virginia politicians last week and whipped them into an unfounded frenzy about job losses from environmental regulations.

And that is why mountaintop removal blasting began last month on
historic Coal River Mountain, less than a football field away from a
dangerous and weak coal slurry impoundment--to wipe out any attempt at
clean energy and a healthy environment. The out-of-state coal barons
want to stop the Coal River Wind Project, which would provide more jobs, more energy, more tax revenues and a healthy environment for the coalfield residents.

Will Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley ever find three hours in their
schedules to see mountaintop removal first hand and visit Coal River
Mountain?

Do they truly believe, as Sutley declared this summer:"...everybody
has the right to live in a clean, healthy environment and a prosperous
economy. And we're working towards that. We need to reach out to
communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are
disproportional impacts, whether it's environmental protection or
promoting [a] clean energy economy"?

Further

Whew. That was way too close for comfort. And yeah, the country's in a sorry state to have come to this. But not only does Doug Jones become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Alabama in 25 years; his win is a blunt rejection of all the hate-mongering, gay-bashing, race-baiting, sexual-assaulting, serial lying crap of losers Moore and Trump and Bannon and their ugly ilk. Forward to mid-terms. And once and for all, to Moore in all his evil: "Fuck you and the horse you (badly) rode in on."